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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25632358">Rekindled</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/felpereBRanco/pseuds/felpereBRanco'>felpereBRanco</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>One Shots [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tomb Raider (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Female Relationships, Light Angst, Soulmate-Identifying Timers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:27:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25632358</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/felpereBRanco/pseuds/felpereBRanco</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lara Croft was 18 years old when she vanished in the middle of the Dragon's Triangle. The markings in her wrists counted down four years, six months and three hours, a promise that somehow, she was going to survive and find a way back to London, to her soulmate. </p><p>Instead, she was forced to face the truth:</p><p> <i> No one leaves Yamatai. <i></i></i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lara Croft/Samantha Nishimura</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>One Shots [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858066</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>121</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Rekindled</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Lara Croft was absolutely sure that her soulmate would be a noble prince. She was six, hiding in her father’s library, dancing between the rusted relics and ancient tomes and she could feel her eyes being drawn to the word in the titles of the books. To be fair, such knowledge wasn’t wholly imagination. Many people sometimes would get insights of their soulmates over the years, even with the numbers in their wrists counting down the exact time until the moment their eyes would meet, details that just stuck to their minds as true when they thought about it. Some rare cases even swore they knew what the faces of their soulmate were before even meeting them!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, Lara was six when she figured out her soulmate would be royalty, and not the boring ones of nowadays, but the princes of old, like from the Roman Empires, where they fought villains and saved damsels. Lara didn’t want to be saved, not really, but she was still elated to know that. She ran to her father and told him so, asked him to teach her all he knew about princes and Kingdoms. Her father, caring and just as enthusiastic as she was about the subject, taught her about Julius Caesar. About King George II and the Xin Dynasty. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Over the years, her desire to find out more about her soulmate also led her to be just as passionate about history as her father. When she was twelve, she knew the names of all pharaohs and where each of them were buried. She could name all historic periods, their characteristics and dates without hesitation and statistics of World War II laid on the tip of her tongue. That...didn’t make her as famous at school as she expected, but she still found a friend there that didn’t mind her rambling from time to time, Steph.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She lived on the other side of the town, in the poorer neighborhoods, but they would meet up at the public library to play with each other. Every few weeks, Steph would also come for sleepovers at the mansion. As they grew, their friendship matured and solidified, and one day, after a lengthy discussion about how she felt about boys, Lara found herself locking lips with Steph, hidden in one of the aisles of the Croft Library after hours. It wasn’t...It wasn’t a kiss. There weren't any fireworks or whatever else the romance books she sometimes skimmed through described. Honestly, it was quite awkward. She wasn't even interested in Steph </span>
  <em>
    <span>that way</span>
  </em>
  <span>. But she was curious, and Steph had been more than willing to participate in her experiments. They broke off and laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“So?” Steph asked, after they sneaked back into Lara’s room. Lara giggled.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I liked it” Lara murmured, blushing. “I don’t… like you, like that, but it was way better than Jordan.” Steph smirked at her smugly before going to sleep, allowing Lara to stare at her ceiling in deep thought. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>The more she thought about it, the more certain she felt that her charming prince was, in fact, a princess. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Time passed, Lara finished high school early, diving deep into research about archeology on the side, visiting the sites her father was working to get more experience. Steph moved out of town, but they kept in touch, talking until midnight about her new job as waitress and Steph's Art History classes. She learned how to shoot and how to hunt from Roth, a friend of the family that was her uncle in all but name, because no matter how much she complained about the inaccuracies of Indiana Jones, she couldn’t stop herself from admitting that she wanted to be that type of explorer, the one walking into old tombs with handmade torches and a gun at her waist. From time to time, she would look at her wrist, counting down the years that seemed to tick down so slowly. She didn’t find out anything else about her soulmate, but she was patient, she could wait it out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then her father died. Steph spent all of her savings to fly back in time for the funeral and Lara watched the closed casket in stunned silence, holding tight to her friend’s hand and crying in Roth’s shoulder. She knew exactly what his face looked like under that, she was the one who found him in his office. The timer in her wrist suddenly didn’t matter as much, especially when she had to go to archeology conventions and hear every nasty rumor about her father’s admittedly odd beliefs. It was hell, and it was what led her to arrange a sudden trip to the Dragon’s Triangle, where the lost island of Yamatai resided. Her father died looking for that place, and she would prove them all that he was on the right track, for once. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steph went with her, loyal to a fault, and when the waves rolled over the boat and Lara fell in the sea, Steph jumped in after her, somehow grabbed her tightly and didn’t let go until their feet touched the sand. There were other survivors on the beach, Lara screamed for help and everything went black.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She woke up in a cave, upside down, and after burning off the bindings and hurting herself falling in a metal rod, she found Steph. She… She didn’t even know what to say, or what to do. Her best friend, the one person that always stood beside her, who followed her into this nightmare because she didn’t want Lara to go alone, strung up and gutted like a twisted version of an offering. Lara puked, swearing whoever did this would </span>
  <em>
    <span>pay.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Lara Croft was 18 years old when she vanished in the middle of the Dragon’s Triangle. She knew how to use a bow and shoot with a gun, so she survived. She fought back against the people trying to kill her crew and tried to find a way off the island. The markings in her wrists counted down four years, six months and three hours, a promise that somehow, she was going to survive and find a way back to London. It was a hope for a better future, an assurance of her own survival.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the island...it was, there was something wrong with it. Random storms coming out of nowhere to strike at those who tried to leave and a cult led by a mad man worshiping an ancient queen... Lara’s crew died off, one by one until she was alone, struggling to survive while fighting off the army led by Mathias. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Coexistence was futile, and Lara found herself battling a war against the Solarii. New supplies were scarce, and each day was a struggle for survival, for the next meal. They had food stores and ammo they collected from shipwrecks, they had a few thousand soldiers and enough guns to last a few years, but Lara had knowledge. She had experience living off of nature and she spent months getting the lay of the land, knowing every nook, every path she could take, and she used that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her battles were riddled with guerrilla tactics, hit and runs, hidden campfires and safe locations. She learned to disguise her tracks and steal whatever she could carry. She would raid their territory and burn it to the ground whenever she could. She hid ziplines, caves and tunnels that she used to cross the island, leaving supply caches all over the place so she could stay mobile. She took their weapons and tinkered with them, using duct tape and other miscellaneous to turn outdated equipment into deadly weapons of destruction. Her soulmate mark became practicality, simply another way to count the time. She stopped looking at the future, focusing on her own survival and slowly, she puzzled out the secret of the island. She read the documents of Mathias’ men, she translated the parchment of a handmaiden called Hoshi, she explored Himiko’s tomb and learned how to kill the Oni. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Himiko, The Storm Queen, lived a half life, stuck in the corpse of a girl that dared to kill herself during the ritual to transfer her immortal soul into a young host. The storms were her anger, her desire for freedom. Lara hated Mathias with every fiber of her being, but she agreed with him in one thing: </span>
  <em>
    <span>No one leaves</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And with that realization, her hope died. She wasn’t leaving this place. She wasn't going to find her way back into civilization, to her better half. Her soulmate could only be just another Solarii she would lock eyes for a second before her arrow struck true. For so long she felt relieved that she had the comforting numbers in her wrist where most of Mathias’ men had bare skin. She didn’t even remember what that meant anymore, after so many years without civilization, but now she… she didn’t know how to feel.  She wrapped her wrist in cloth and stopped looking at it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was four years living on that island, raging hell on earth in Steph’s name when she zip lined to the cliff overlooking the beach and saw people. Not Oni, not Mathias’ men patrolling their territory, but survivors. Stupid, idiotic survivors that wouldn’t last long because they were lighting a bonfire in the middle of a red zone, the Solarii Territory. She frowned, digging out an emptied sniper rifle she hid in the bushes of that cliff, and used the scope.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There were three of them, pacing tiredly around the fire while they argued, hand motions telling Laura they were likely screaming at each other. Two women and a large man. He tried to get in between them, speaking calmly, but it didn’t quiet them. Lara swung the scope into the bushes, around the rocks and the caves and spied a Solarii ducking back into cover. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Shit... She had to do something</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Lara thought, looking around wildly, planning a path forward. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She failed her crew, she failed </span>
  </em>
  <span>Steph</span>
  <em>
    <span>. She wouldn’t let these people fall into Mathias’ hands.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>_</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Samantha Nishimura was 24 when she was hired by the famous Dr. Whitman for an expedition looking for the lost island of Yamatai. It was supposed to be a reality show, he told her, she was going to record every minute of the trip and, when they docked back without finding anything, she was supposed to magically edit it into a masterpiece. Honestly, Sam wasn’t really happy with the job, but she accepted mostly because she had always been curious about Queen Himiko, the legendary leader of Yamatai that, according to her father, was once a part of her family lineage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So she packed up, met the Dr., who didn’t take long to show himself as an asshole and a charlatan. She met Jonah, the big guy with a heart of gold, and Conrad Roth, the serious captain that sailed the Dragon’s Triangle every year, apparently looking for his wayward niece lost at sea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam frowned, respectfully turning off the camera during that conversation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, it was only after the boat entered open waters that she realized she would be meeting her soulmate in three days. She never put much thought about it before, she knew she would meet her perfect match one day, but usually there was so much going on in her life that she just pushed it to the back of her mind. It would happen when it was supposed to happen and all that. But now though, well, she felt puzzled (And more than a little bit worried). The markings told her she would be meeting her soulmate soon, but it didn’t tell her </span>
  <em>
    <span>how.</span>
  </em>
  <span> And Sam accidentally locked herself in the middle of nowhere, so how the hell was her soulmate supposed to show up?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wandered through the ship, talking with every single person (Both making recordings for her job and to make sure her soulmate wasn’t just part of the night crew.) and no luck. Sam couldn't stop the irrational fear she just missed her chance by boarding this boat. She had no idea how she was supposed to meet her soulmate, but she never, even in her wildest dreams, imagined it was going to be in a shipwreck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had just washed up ashore. She was tired and wet, and very pissed off. Reyes was blaming Roth and snapping at Jonah just because he was trying to be optimistic, and Sam just couldn’t shut up anymore and stop herself from getting up right into her face, even if yelling at the person holding a pistol was an infinitely stupid idea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you, Reyes. You’re angry,</span>
  <em>
    <span> I get it</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to snap at us. I’m just as hurt as you are, I almost drowned! But you don’t see me complaining do I?” She yelled, making Reyes flinch. Jonah looked at her worriedly before trying to step in, hands up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sam, don’t-” She interrupted him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, she needs to hear this. You’re worried about your daughter, that’s fair.” She pulled the sleeve of her jacket, showing her timer to Reyes. “I was really looking forward to today, y’know. I was going to meet my soulmate for the first time. Instead, I’m stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere and I’m probably never going to get the chance to meet her again, if I even manage to survive.” She cut herself off, lowering her arm and glaring at Reyes, who sighed in regret. “So if you want to scream, great. Go for it, there’s nobody here to listen, but don’t yell at us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re right.” She admitted after a tense silence. “I’m sorry.” She offered. Sam nodded, sitting down, when Jonah blinked, turning to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, you’re meeting your soulmate today?” He asked, sounding confused. Sam shrugged, moping.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, in…” She looked at her wrist. “4 minutes… huh.” She shrugged again, scoffing disappointedly. “Maybe she’s an angel? Fall from the sky right into my lap when it zeroes out?” Sam joked. Reyes smirked humorlessly, but there was still a sliver of pity in her gaze when their eyes met. Jonah, though, frowned before coming to a realization. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or maybe-” He didn’t get to finish. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fresh Meat!” Came a shout from behind him. They turned, seeing a half-naked man running at them holding some kind of axe. “Kill the intruders!” More screams answered his plea. Sam snapped to her feet, looking shocked at the approaching man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, why are you-” She tried to ask before Reyes grabbed the shoulder of her jacket and pulled her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Watch out!” Reyes yelled over the sound of a gunshot hitting the sand. Jonah ducked under the wild swing and hit the crazed man with a right hook, knocking him to the ground. “Take cover!” Reyes yelled and they jumped behind the shipwrecks that littered the beach. Sam barely ducked into a piece of metal when she heard a bullet hitting it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We gotta get out of here!” She yelled over the sound of fucking assault rifles. Reyes nodded at her, pulling the pistol she grabbed earlier and shooting back wildly. Jonah yelled, and Sam turned wide eyed at him to see blood flowing through his arm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m ok!” He yelled, noticing her gaze. “Just a graze!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And suddenly the gunfire stopped. She heard gurgles and screams calling for the “Outsider”. The sound of bodies quietly hitting the ground and just as she started to scramble back from the pickaxe man, who had gotten back up and ran at her, an arrow suddenly found its way into his throat, coming from Reyes’ side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The three of them turned to see a girl standing over some bushes holding a bow. She was kinda pretty, Sam noticed, with her tight tank top and brown ponytail. Their eyes met and time </span>
  <em>
    <span>stopped.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span> There was a phantom feeling coming from her wrist, indescriptible but somewhat like a heat wave travelling all over her body. The girl’s quick glance to her own wrist, tied in a white dirtied cloth, told her she was feeling the same. And then it hit her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holy shit, this was her soulmate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The girl quickly put the bow around her neck and grabbed a fucking assault rifle that was slung across her shoulder, resting against her waist. Firing it in long bursts from her hip at the darkness beyond the campfire, somehow hitting every single target judging by the screams of pain. She shifted her hand and pulled another trigger. A whoosh of air and a second after a grenade exploded, revealing five men being blown back, flames lighting their figures. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holy. Shit. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This</span>
  </em>
  <span> was her soulmate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Follow!” The girl yelled, letting the rifle drop to her waist and picking the bow again and running into the bushes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not-” Reyes tried to say, but Sam cut her off by sprinting toward where the girl went, Jonah following right behind her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do we know we can trust her?” Reyes yelled while they ran.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s my soulmate!” Sam replied, spotting the girl standing at the side of the cave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hurry!” The girl yelled. She lit a torch as they caught up to her and jumped first into the cave, sliding down the slippery slope before running through the narrow corridor. Honestly, Sam was a bit terrified of tight places, but she forced herself to keep running after her, trusting the girl had a way out of this mess.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck!” Reyes yelled, stumbling, and the girl replied with a “Quiet!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, the girl stopped at a fork, knocking an arrow and aiming at them as she yelled “Left!” and </span>
  <em>
    <span>lighted the arrow on fire.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Sam hesitated for a second before throwing herself into the even more narrow corridor. A loud explosion came from behind her, but she could still hear the heavy breathing of her friends so she didn’t worry. After another minute of running, they stopped at a large room. Sam was too busy catching her breath and noticing the stuff lying around to see the girl steal Reyes’ guns, but she frowned when she saw it pointing it at them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whoa” “Easy!” “Wait, what?” They startled, but the girl didn't answer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Who?" She asked in a rough voice from misuse.. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"My name is Jonah," The big guy came to the rescue, touching a hand to his chest in a calming manner. Her gun turned to him. "We were on a ship when a storm hit." She stared at him for a moment, before letting her arm drop down. Sam relaxed, letting out a quiet, relieved breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This island… dangerous." She explained, before offering the gun back at Reyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Who were those guys?" Sam piped in, unable to stop her own curiosity. The girl looked at her curiously. "And who are you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm Lara." She introduced, before frowning. "I was in a ship, like you. They are Solarii, c-</span>
  <em>
    <span>cultists.</span>
  </em>
  <span>" She spat out the last word, stumbling over the pronunciation. "They kill other survivors, or take them." A pause.  "You want to survive?" She asked them seriously. Sam scoffed, bringing attention to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course we do." She answered. The girl nodded, taking her words seriously, and gave them one last look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Then be smart." She turned her back to them, walking to a small passage on the other side of the cave, hidden behind branches. Lara looked over her shoulder with a frown, before rolling her eyes. "And follow me." She added. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam couldn't stop from ogling her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's your soulmate, huh?" Jonah asked amused from beside her, watching the girl vanish into the cave as Reyes followed. Sam didn't answer, awestruck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>_</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hours later, Lara sat quietly near the campfire as she sharpened her arrows. She was in one of her emergency hide-out, a small clearing in the middle of the thickest part of the woods, in a very hard to reach location. Beside her, the three survivors she rescued slept, including the girl, her… her soulmate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was so strange to think about it. She spent years ignoring the markings in her wrists, so afraid of the day she met her other half, and now, instead of being back in the city like she once hoped, or killing her with the rest of the Solarii like she feared, she was here. Sam. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam, her soulmate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She held up the arrowhead, judging it's edge before she put it aside and grabbed the next one. According to Jonah, there were other survivors. A man named Whitman was still missing, and they managed to talk to their captain, Conrad, through a radio they ended up leaving at the beach. Lara was going to try and save them too, maybe wash a little bit of the blood on her hands along the way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Having people around her, actual people she could talk to was so… bizarre. Sometimes, before she found out about Himiko, she would daydream about other people. She would sit at a campfire and talk to herself, imagining herself in an interview or maybe with a therapist. (Because Gods, she needed one.) She imagined herself talking about her hobbies, or their favorite colors or any number of meaningless conversations just so she wouldn't feel alone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And here she was now, sitting less than five foot beside one and she didn't even know where to begin. She knew her voice was rough from spending most of her day in silence, and at this point she had already stopped thinking in sentences years before. Her syntax was shit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though honestly, considering her use of the simple, yet highly intuitive "Fuck you", "Bastards" and "Die in a fire" that composed 90% of what she said in the past 4 years, well, she was surprised she wasn't rustier. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hey." Lara heard the girl say from behind her, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sam,</span>
  </em>
  <span> as she stepped over the log to sit down at her side. She glanced at her, noting the relaxed posture and the fact neither of them tensed from the closeness either, before returning her attention to the arrow. She heard breaths and small gasps at her side as the girl tried to think of something to say. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're my soulmate." Sam blurted out, after a moment. Lara nodded her head, not stopping her work. "I… I kinda expected a bigger reaction."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sigh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't… know what to say, Sam." Lara shrugged. The arrow was sharp, but she chipped a bit of the left side when the girl spoke the second time. She frowned, pursing her lips, and decided that it wouldn't throw her aim off too much. "I gave up on you years ago." She admitted. Sam recoiled, hurt visible in her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What… What do you mean by that?" She asked, eyes wet. Lara looked at her and frowned. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You wouldn't understand." She commented. She really wouldn't. She gave up on her soulmate because no one leaves. And no one leaves because The Sun Queen controlled storms. Lara had spent years off the grid, but she was pretty sure magic was still considered myth and bullshit in the outside world. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think I deserve more than that." Sam snapped. Lara closed her eyes with a sigh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine." She murmured before turning halfway so she could sit facing her soulmate. "I lived on this Island for 5 years." She started, eyes hard. "When I first got here, you were...Hope." She said, waving her bandaged wrist to her. "You were proof that I lived for the next four years. That I will leave this desolate island and find you." Sam winced, eyes fixed on the white cloth. "But this island is… wrong." Lara shrugged, self conscious. "No one leaves." She repeated the same mantra that every habitant knew by heart, somehow managing to put that weight in her tone. "I killed… Gods, hundreds, trying to survive and when I realized that… Sam, the only way I could ever meet my soulmate was in the moment I killed them. I'm not- I'm not a murderer. A-A psychopath. I don't like killing, but to survive I had to let this island turn me into one." Their eyes met and Lara glared. "And if I'm doomed to kill my own soulmate, then I… I would prefer not knowing which shot did it." Her voice wavered at the end</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"But I'm here now, Lara." Sam shrugged, wiping her tears. Lara mirrored her action. "You're </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> going to kill me." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No…" Lara sighed, then shrugged. "But I don't know what else to do." She finished lamely, not knowing how to explain her thoughts. Killing was the only thing she knew anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their eyes met, and Lara found a sliver of hope. She… She knew how to save. She could teach them to survive too, couldn't she?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lara made a decision. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I have to find the others." She said, breaking the somber mood by snapping to her feet. She grabbed the bow, throwing it over her shoulders, and took the arrows. "Stay. No noise. No fire." She looked up at the sky, judging the time before sunrise, imagining the paths she would take, the location where each missing person would likely be. "I'm back at noon."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam stuttered, but she ignored the girl, strutting into the bushes with the gait of a predator. </span>
</p>
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